"Images of images of images. Texts erased, rewritten, torn up. Signs, figures, bodies, enclosures washed away by the waters. Stones eroded on top of stones. A place now under a cloud of dust. Dwelling place without memory, who held you? A time hungry to be swallowed up in night. You sow words and get echoes back, echoes of echoes in the uncertain dome of desolation. I would give all the air for a cry, the possesion of the kingdom for a single moan. The augurs opened the entrails of the god and fed his lacerated body to the predators."

José Angel Valente

Valente is one of the major Spanish poets. He died in the year 2000. I associate him with Beckett, in that he is a kind of "last modernist." This short prose poem, with no title, is typical of his late work. His value in the Spanish tradition is inestimable, because he brings a certain modern tradition into Spain. He greatly admired Celan and Jabès, for example. Yet for readers who have already read his influences, I wonder whether Valente might seem too obvious? The style is strikingly original in Spanish, although less so now that he has spawned so many imitators.